


System Restore

by Orockthro



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Time Travel, canon noncompliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He reaches for him just as Harold says, “It’s for you, John,” in a shocky voice that has Reese bracing in case he drops. He holds out the phone, and John takes it on reflex.<br/>“<i>System. Restore.</i>”<br/>He hears static, threads a hand around Finch’s cold fingers, and --"</p>
<p>(Things go wrong. And then they go again, maybe right this time. AKA time travel.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings and pairings are subject to change, but I'll adjust the tags as needed. :)

**Prologue**

Things went wrong. John’s not even sure when it started to slide from their usual controlled chaos into something... more. He’s positive Root had something to do with it, but they can’t find her, not even with the machine. He loads a second clip into his pistol and re-thinks his phrasing. Especially not with the machine.

“Mr. Reese. Please, hurry...”

The machine is compromised, that’s how Harold put it, with that delicate and almost military term. The machine is compromised, and they need to run. Not run and fight. Run. They’re an exposed nerve now, with nothing to hide them. Their names and aliases, contacts, and in Finch’s case, family members, were broadcast all over the internet two hours ago. Even the fresh identities they haven't used. They’re burned, now with nothing but the clothes on their back and passwords to Finch’s bank accounts that are just a worthless string of letters and numbers. He’s got cash in his apartment, but they can’t risk going there. They need to get out of the state.

Shots ricochet off the wall of the alley two blocks from the library. They left it where it stood with Finch hitting the literal red button that would set the place ablaze as their failsafe. He can see the smoke from here.

Reese shoves Finch forward, torn between keeping himself a body shield and the need to take point. Bear takes care of the issue for him, surging ahead and ripping open the jugular of the woman pointing an uzi at them.

“Mr. Reese, please, listen to me. It’s gone wrong.”

He takes out three guys with three bullets. He’s only got two left in the gun and only one extra clip in his belt. “I got that, Harold.”

“No, I mean, it’s gone wrong,” and he says it in that tone of voice he uses when something bad is about to happen, all forced air through lungs.  

A man in a halloween mask bursts out of a second story window and wrestles Bear to the ground. Bear gets him back, but for the moment, it’s just him and Harold, and they’re fast growing outnumbered. The exit he’d been aiming them for, the chain link fence that led to the schoolyard, is blocked off by an armoured SUV.

“Harold, when I count to three, you need to run.”

“John, whatever you’re thinking--”

He shoves Harold face first into the dirt as a fist slams through the air he occupied a second before. He manages to swing his legs over him in a defending position as he takes out the two fighters, both trained but unskilled, and he only takes one hit to the ribs.

He doesn’t even notice until the second man is down that Finch isn’t struggling to get up like he should be. He’s just laying there, sucking in breath and holding his phone up to his face. It lights him eerily, all blue glow and hollow.

“Finch, we have to move.” Two more mercenaries are closing in, and Bear is still dealing with the first.

“Oh dear,” and Reese recognises that tone of voice too. The breathlessness of it, thinking too hard and fast to worry about limbs.

There’s no time. He isn’t gentle about it; he grabs Harold under the arms and hauls him to his feet. When that doesn’t seem enough to spur him, he bodily moves him forward towards the SUV blocking their exit. If he can take out the driver, they may have a getaway vehicle.

Finch is letting himself be pulled, but he’s not helping. “Mr. Reese, the machine would like us to answer the phone.”

The machine hasn’t contacted them since the firewalls came down and access changed from conservative information given to select individuals, to a free-for-all for anyone with an an internet connection and few scruples. Harold’s computer started to ping, the numbers came in unendingly, hundreds of them, before that stopped too and it was clear that whatever the machine had been trying to do failed. Two hours later the darknet erupted, and they burned the library as they fled.

“What phone,” he starts to say, but the brrring-brrring of a payphone on the corner interrupts him. It’s fifteen feet left of the SUV and will put them in a vulnerable position to reach it.

“Can’t risk it,” he grits out, and shoves them against the wall of a Tarot parlor as baseball bat splinters against the brick. Finch is squirming like an eel and pulling away. “Finch!”

He loses him when the woman with the now broken baseball bat gets him in the jaw, and it takes him precious seconds to fling her off. When he looks up again Finch is at the payphone with it clutched in his bone-white hands.

“Mr. Reese...”

It’s strange that he can hear him so clearly when his voice is just a murmur. He reaches for him just as Harold says, “It’s for you, John,” in a shocky voice that has Reese bracing in case he drops. He holds out the phone, and John takes it on reflex.

_“System. Restore.”_

He hears static, threads a hand around Finch’s cold fingers, and --

 


	2. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

 

Harold wakes with a splitting headache and pain radiating from his neck. He doesn't move. He learned years ago that it was best to wait it out, to blink and let his muscles slowly untangle. Only it's not as easy to do that when Nathan Ingram's face is two inches from his own and terrified.

“Harold? Jesus, are you alright?”

It's a perfectly reasonable assumption that he's hallucinating, so he ignores the pathetic amalgamation his sickened mind has provided and works instead on breathing slowly, in and out, and waits for the pain to abate enough that he can attempt to right himself.

Only the hallucination is now gripping him by his shoulders with a surprisingly tangible touch and saying, “Harold, you're scaring me. Please say something.”

He's on the floor. He hadn't realized. He must have fallen from his computer chair while Mr. Reese was out. God only knows what's happened in his absence. Only that’s not right. They were in the field. Something had gone wrong. He reaches for the earpiece to tap and finds his only the empty shell of his ear. And then he starts to shake, because the pain is gone, an empty space in his mind that he's gotten used to.

“I'm calling an ambulance. Just stay there. Don't move!”

The pain isn't lessened and back to its more usual, manageable level; it's gone entirely. He tests his neck, gently because the idea is laughable, but he twists to his comfortable 20 degrees and then, when there isn't a tug, keeps twisting. There's no creak of surgical titanium, no rebellion of scarred-over muscles.

It's impossible. Just as impossible is Nathan standing in the hallway with a corded telephone, pale and gesturing widely to the 911 operator. He tunes in as Nathan says, “... just collapsed. Maybe a stroke? But he's too young for a stroke...” which is ridiculous, because he's precisely the right age for one. He scrapes his memory past the pain that engulfed him, and tries to remember what happened before. They were running, something awful happened. There's a blank spot he can't fill, surrounded with flashes of John moving with lethal intent.

Nathan is back. Harold can't stop the parasympathetic nervous system response that still has his body trembling. When Nathan takes his hand he has to close his eyes, because it feels so real. The callouses, mostly disappeared from years of handshaking instead of sports, the large warmness of his palm.

“The paramedics are on their way. How are you feeling?”

He presses his mouth shut. There's no point entertaining his mind in this madness. It's interesting to watch Nathan's face collapse in on itself, forehead dipping cheeks rising until Nathan looks nothing like the confident CEO that took IFT from a couple of guys in a cheap office to a global force. He forgot how expressive he was.

“You'll be fine.”

It comes back to him in a rush; John’s hand on his elbow as the city started to crumble, Bear growling at the fists pounding the door. The Machine was cracked open, his back door (Nathan’s back door) swung wide and exposed and flooding out secrets to anyone with an internet connection. Harold laughs a little, because just like his trembling shoulders, it's an involuntary response he has no hope of stopping. Because when he jerked, his hip rotated fully. It’s the sort of laugh that bubbles out high from his chest over his breastbone and leaves him light headed. Nathan just hangs onto his hand so hard it hurts, and Harold catalogs each point of pressure until the paramedics arrive.

 

He's declared fit twice at the hospital, the second time because Nathan throws several blank checks around until half the hospital staff has been in to poke and prod him. Harold is shown x-rays of his head, to prove he doesn't have a fracture, and he can't stop staring at the tiny vertebrae that thread down from his skull. His vertebrae, devoid of knotted scar tissue and metal plates holding him together.

It wasn't a stroke, it wasn't a heart attack, it wasn't a seizure. There’s no tumor, his blood pressure is fine, his oxygen numbers are good.

“You're missing something. Do you want to get sued?” Nathan is outside the door shouting at the most recent doctor who has dared to find Harold healthy and hale. He traces the unmarked bones in his neck and listens as Nathan says, “There's something wrong with him.”

Finally they leave in a taxi, because the hospital won't keep a fit man, even with all of Nathan's money. The doctors suggest moving Harold to the psychiatric ward if Nathan is worried about his nonverbal and dissociative behavioral shift. Nathan gives the taxi driver the address of the downtown flat, the one he'd bought after Olivia started the separation process. 2005, then, but not after 2006 when he’d bought the loft and sold this place. He's allowing himself to be tricked into thinking this is real. He needs to wake up, to find Mr. Reese. Something must have happened for him to be dissociating like this. Perhaps if he flings himself onto the road it will jolt him back to reality. It’s an extreme option, one he admits is born mostly out of desperation rather than rational thought. It might work. Or it might kill him, bloodily, in front of Nathan’s eyes, and he can’t stomach doing that to him, even in this unreality.

“Harold--”

He gets one hand twisted through the door handle, not pulling, just resting on the cold metal, before Nathan has him by the shoulder and is yanking him back. He bounces off the seat with force, and Nathan doesn't let go.

“What the hell are you doing!”

He wasn’t really going to do it, he wants to say, not really. Nathan's hands are still wrapped around his arms, holding him steady. He keeps hold until the taxi pulls up outside the high rise, until they're through the doors and Nathan double checks the locks on the windows. He's led like a child to the spare bedroom and Nathan sits him down on the edge of the bed and unties his shoes.

“You just had a bad day. You'll feel better in the morning,” Nathan says, almost like a prayer. It's something Harold's watched him say to Will before, when he was a child and down with a cold. Then, when the shoes are off, when the jacket is folded and hung on the back of the chair, he says, “Please. Please, Harold. Just say something.”

And something in Harold clicks open, and his tongue is released. “Nathan,” he utters, and he lets himself sink back into the bed, devoid of pain.

“Oh thank god,” Nathan says, and the bed dips as he sits down on it. “You scared the shit out of me. How are you feeling?”

“Am I dreaming?” He reaches out to touch him, something he admits is entirely selfish and tactile. He slips his fingers around his wrist lets them rest there, a gentle pressure.

Nathan snorts. “I thought you only dreamed of code.”

“No. I dream of you dying quite frequently.”

The wrist in his hand pulls away, and he's left feeling empty. “That's morbid, even for you, Harold.”

He shrugs, both shoulders, because he can. “I suppose I'm haunted by it. Your death was very influential on my life.”

Nathan goes still. “Harold. My god. You know I'm not dead, right? I'm taking you back in. They must have missed something: a brain tumor, a clot, God only knows what.”

“Please don't leave,” he says when Nathan stands up. He sounds frightened to his own ears. “I missed you, more than you can ever know. Just... humor me. Stay. I'll wake up soon, anyhow, and it'll all be gone.”

The phone rings in the kitchen. “I have to get that,” Nathan says, and moves towards the door. “It might be Will. And then we're going back to the hospital.”

Harold closes his eyes and tries to memorize the feeling of Nathan's skin under his fingers, already fleeting. At some point he'll have to surface, to wake up and find John staring at him instead of Nathan. Maybe he's been grievously injured and this is some sort of fever dream. Or maybe he's retreating from some unimaginable knowledge. He shudders as his mind supplies possibilities. John laid out in the gutter somewhere, skull ripped open by a bullet, a knife, a mallet. The fact that his Machine has been savaged and has planted the seeds of a world-wide guerrilla war should be more frightening, but he can't get the image of John, so utterly still and destroyed, out of his head.

He opens his eyes. Nathan is in the hallway. He's pale.

“What did you do, Harold.”

He sits up.

“There's been a system-wide reboot.” Harold is pushing himself off the pillows when Nathan continues. “Do you know who told me that?”

The swimming sensation, the pleasant floating, is disappearing. “You're just my subconscious. You'll come up with anything to keep the illusion going, and frankly I'm disappointed at the lack of nuance in the scenario my mind has supplied.”

“For God's sake, I'm being serious. We have a major security breach. You're the one so obsessed with checks and balances, Harold. Alicia Corwin shouldn't even know we’re online yet, let alone call me at my home about it. We only just sold the contract a few months ago.”

He blinks. That isn’t what he expected, and it isn’t something he would think of. He’s done his best to bury Alicia Corwin’s existence altogether. The memory of her death is not one he likes to relive. His hands shake a little despite himself, more for the memory of Root and what came after than anything else.

A system reboot, a system restore. It’s ludicrous, of course. He finds himself mulling over the possibility that it’s real despite that. In his lifetime he’s been party to a shocking number of ludicrous things.

“Tell me something you’ve never told me,” he says. He must sound serious, because Nathan is looking at him oddly. “Something I couldn’t make up.”

“Alright. I’m scared right now. Olivia is leaving me, Will is staying with her because she has more time for him, and my best friend is having a mental breakdown. Don’t do this to me, Harold. For the love of god, please don’t do this. I know it’s selfish, but please be okay.”

He runs through the possibilities. His research on hallucinations and delusions is limited, but this level of prolonged delusion seems unlikely. Especially with no fluctuations or breaks. However the alternative, that the Machine has initiated a system-wide reboot that has somehow restored not just the Machine, but his life is equally unlikely. And yet so much more appealing than the alternative.

“I’m not having a mental breakdown,” he says quietly, even though he’s not yet convinced he’s telling the truth. “And you don’t have to take me back to the hospital. I’m feeling much better.”

Nathan doesn’t quite believe him, that much is clear. “I should take you back anyway. They did a CT scan, but they might have missed something.” But he isn’t fighting it when Harold starts to sit up from bed and get himself on his feet. He almost loses his balance overcompensating for the stiffness in his hip that isn’t there.

“No. Have a little faith in modern medicine, Nathan.”

Finally Nathan smiles, and god, the way it lights up his face. In the end, there hadn’t been many smiles like that, except the final one burned in his memory alongside shrapnel that no longer dotts his skin.

“Alright. But I’m making you breakfast.”

“You can’t cook.”

Nathan feeds him a staggering number of chocolate chip pancakes, all covered in strawberries to hide the charred undersides. “They’re in season,” he says as an excuse to heap more onto Harold’s plate. He eats them all, surprisingly ravenous. He and Mr. Reese hadn’t had time to eat earlier today, eight years in the future, providing that he isn’t in a delusion.

They spend the day in Nathan’s flat, whittling away at nostalgic thought problems from college. Every few minutes Nathan sneaks a glance at him, steals a casual arm brush, until he’s is finally satisfied that Harold won’t up and die on him. When he finally crashes in Nathan’s bed and falls asleep breathing in the smell of his shampoo on the pillow (it’s closer than the guest bedroom, he tells himself), he’s pretty sure Nathan stays up and spends the night watching him.

In the morning, when the coffee pot is brewing and Harold’s made his tea, Nathan says, “Olivia has Will for the two weeks while college is on break. You’re staying here.”

“Oh am I?”

Nathan has the courtesy to look slightly apprehensive. It’s more than he expected; Nathan was never good at being anything other than confident.  

“Yes. It’ll be like college. Besides, you did say you’d like to work more with me again. Like old times, I think was your phrasing.” There’s a wink in the words, but Harold feels sick.

“I did say that.”

They break open a laptop Nathan has tucked in the back room. It’s one of the IFT ones, not a personal one. It’s chunky and familiar, the plastic thick under his fingertips, and the keys have the letters worn right off of them from use. He’s missed this; Nathan buzzing in the background, the computer drives humming. He brings up the terminal window that will connect them to the rudimentary version of the Machine they’d created by 2005. His fingers hover over the keys, suddenly unsure.

The white cursor blinks at him. And then white numbers and letter start filling the page, unbidden, decoding as they run.

_< Catastrophic losses. System restore Y/N? Y. Reboot from a previous version Y/N? Y. Previous version August 18, 2005, restore at startup. Y/N? Y.>_

Breath catches in his throat. He types back: “I didn’t write this programming.”

_< N.>_

“You can’t be doing this.”

_< Y. Necessary.>_

He means that it’s not possible, not that it’s against protocols. And yet he finds himself believing it. His fingers reach to type, “And Mr. Reese?” when Nathan’s shadow falls over the laptop.

“What’s that?” Nathan is behind him, mug of irish coffee in hand. Harold pushes it away.

“Nothing.” He closes the terminal. “I’ve been thinking. The defense structures of the Machine... they could use some work. It’s weak. Or it will be.”

“They seemed fine to me. Are you sure?”

He thinks about Nathan, alive. Nathan, here with him right now in the unfathomable 2005, the Machine and everything that lay before them just in its infancy. There’s so much to be done. And he thinks about John, fists bloody in the streets of 2013.

“Yes. I am.”

They have a lot of work to do.


	3. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

  


Reese blinks. There’s an afterimage he can’t shake, red spots in his vision. The taste of ozone.

He blinks, and Kara is peering at him, inches away and smelling of sweat and coal. “What does Mark have to say?” she asks. His chest is light, there’s no bomb vest even though he can feel the phantom bite of the straps. The air is humid and alien.  They’re in China; this is the safe house three miles outside of the research facility. He remembers this place, the mold on the wall and the stains on the ceiling, and the heat of the blast to come.

There’s a phone in his hand, but he can’t feel it because his fingers are numb from clutching it. In 2010 this was the phone Snow called and gave them the green-light on for the Ordos mission. Now he just hears static and the echo of Harold’s voice. “It’s for you, John.”

This is wrong. His mind echoes Finch’s words half a world away. Kara is leaning against the doorjamb between the bedroom and the bathroom, just like he remembers, because she hated having her back to anything. The scars on her chin and face are gone, leaving her young but not any less dangerous than when she had him wired to blow. The smells are too vivid, Kara is in too sharp a resolution. John’s brain shuts down. Everything here is wrong and he remembers it too clearly. But not as clearly as the baseball bat splintering where Finch’s head had been, and the smell of the library burning. He can’t hear Finch’s voice. He needs to hear Finch’s voice.

“I need to get back to him! Now!” he shouts into the receiver, trying to trick his mind into waking up. Finch is still in the alley, still surrounded and alone while John is here in this memory, useless to him. He must have been hit on the head, but he doesn’t remember it. He blinks, hard, tries to conjure up the smell of ozone again. There’s only a hiss coming through the phone; it’s dead. He pries his fingers from the plastic shell of the phone one by one and lets it drop onto the bed. It smolders.  

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kara is looking between him and the phone, and he sees her fingers twitch towards her firearm.

He rubs his eyes; the spots are disappearing. His gun is at his hip. He could reach for it, point it between his eyes, and pull the trigger. Or he could move suddenly towards Kara, let her do it more efficiently. That might send him back, might leave him blinking his eyes at the brick alley instead of the mold covered wood paneling. Might blink and find Harold looking at him, worried.

“Seriously, John. What the hell? Give me a reason not to ground you on this mission.”

It would be too easy to rush her and let her swing her gun up to point at him, center of mass. She’ll do it without hesitation. If he tells her the truth, she’ll shoot him. She’s made it clear what happens to operatives who lose it while on missions, and there isn’t a chance she’ll take his honesty as anything other than a ploy or a sign that he’s cracked. If he runs, she’ll shoot him. Either way, she’ll tell Snow, and his exits out of the country will be burned. His fingers are tingling where the still-smoldering phone left a line of burns across the tips. The pain is real, the smell of the melted plastic is real. There’s no guarantee Kara’s bullet would send him back and not just wound him, potentially fatally, while stranded in China.

He needs to get to Finch. He can’t risk anything else.

He knows this mission, the ins and outs of it. They’d preped for it for days, and every turn is locked in his memory; it changed everything. They’re in the safe house, the recon work was done yesterday. All that’s left is the slash and burn of the facility.

“System restore,” he repeats. Something sparks in his chest, a series of possibilities. Finch never explained the complexities of the Machine to him, and he never asked beyond what was necessary for any particular mission. When Harold was taken, he took a leap of faith with the Machine. Now maybe it’s time to leap again. “Just a glitch, that’s all. I’m fine.” She still has her finger hovering over the trigger of her pistol, even though it’s not pointed at him. He can’t risk it, as tempting as the option of death is, stranded here in this nightmare. He’ll follow her, like he did in 2010. It’ll be five, maybe six hours from now that i’ll go to hell. Five, maybe six hours is a long time, but he’s been undercover for much longer. Then, he’ll find Finch.

“Mark says the mission is a go,” he says, not because he heard what Snow had to say, but because that’s what he said in 2010. He puts his shaking hands in his pockets and turns to Kara. “Let’s get started.”

****

He follows Kara they start to climb the stairs up the research building, past the bodies of the slaughtered scientists, towards the roof. The roof where he’ll raise his gun to shoot Kara, per Snow’s orders, and change his mind. The roof where Kara will have no such misgivings.

He feels too light, like he’s not there. His body is three years younger, the twinge in his side is gone, so is the bruising he got earlier that day with Finch. They round the landing and pass a steel door that says “Level 3” in both English and Chinese. Every time he blinks he expects to see Finch again, looking at him in the alley like he’s lost his mind and asking what’s wrong. All he sees are the backs of Kara’s shoes.

She sends him a sidelong look as they reach the top. She’s probably wondering if he got the same kill orders she did. He hadn’t wondered, the first time around. “We’re almost done with this hellhole, just have to light the flares and we can go home.” Only now “going home” means finding Harold.

They push through the door to the roof, and after they clear it, she plunks down and scoops out two MREs. Just like he remembers her doing. She’ll eat it cold, and he won’t eat any. He’ll regret it, he remembers, because once he’s shot and bleeding out there isn’t another chance for a hot meal for a long, long time.

He takes the brown packet from her and shakes it, using the chemical heat pack. “Thanks,” he says, and the taste of ozone is back, overpowering the chicken flavoring. “When you shoot me, mind going for a kill shot this time?”

Kara only freezes for a second; he forgot how good she was. “What are you talking about, John?”

“Snow. He gave you the order to kill me. He gave me that order too.”

“And how do you know I haven’t already done that. Poisoned your water, your food.”

He smiles. “I know you, Kara. You’ll shoot me in the gut. And then Mark will drop two tons of missiles onto this location after you light the roof, destroying us and the evidence.”

Kara’s lips are tight around her teeth. “That’s an interesting story.”

“So let’s keep it a story. We finish eating, we walk away.”

Kara barks out a laugh. “You always were so naive, John. Walking away has never been an option.”

The fact that he can’t taste the chicken makes it easy to mechanically chew through the final spoonfuls. “I won’t shoot you,” he tells her.

“Then you’re an idiot.” She has her gun out, pointed at his chest and held steady. “Goodbye, John.”

“Goodbye, Kara.” He ducks, rolls towards the stairs, and leaps over the railing. It’s not graceful, and he drops two flights before managing to swing himself back onto the staircase. He only notices that she winged him in his right side when he’s out and running for the forest, the bite of pain flaring up every time his foot touches the ground. This him is in better shape. This him is two twisted knees and a handful of bullets removed. He runs for four miles in the opposite direction of the safe house at a dead sprint before he realizes she isn’t chasing him, that he can see a pillar of smoke in the distance. Snow’s already sent the missiles, the research building is already burning. An hour before he remembers. It is only dusk now; she must have lit the flares early.

He collapses and sits with his back to a tree and lets his body rest. The bullet missed his ribs, grazed the flesh, and tore two holes in his jacket and shirt. It’s better than the liver-perforating wound she’d given him the last time they’d done this that left him laid up and feverish for months. He checks. There’s no scar from when Snow shot him in the parking garage either.

The pain of the graze is real. So is the half numb tingle from his phone-burned fingers, the sore muscles, the pang in his gut from eating and running. He’s endured enough drug induced hallucinations, torture where the only escape is his mind, to know that it’s never like this. This is real. Actually real, not just a desperate thought. His hands start to shake in a way that belays all his military training, but none of his training has prepared him for this.

He sits for a long time, rubbing his eyes and praying to wake up in New York. It’s been five hours since he answered the phone. If Finch is still in the alley he’ll be dead by now, strangled or shot or stabbed, left to bleed out alone. It’s five hours in the past and three years in the future. Either way he’s in the wrong time. He beats the back of his head against the tree again and again and lets the pain take over. The pain that’s real, because this is real.

“Please,” he says between his teeth. “Please.” There’s no earpiece to talk to, only God.

When the moon is rising and he’s contemplating getting a few more miles in before daybreak, he hears a crinkle-snap of feet over leaves and branches. It’s deliberate, intended to give away a location. Kara stands in front of him, lit up behind by the light that filters through the dense leaves. She doesn’t say anything, just drops onto the ground next to him. She’s loose limbed, but he can feel the coiled fury and frustration radiating out of her.

”I’m going back to New York,” he says. “There’s a ferry that will smuggle passengers without visas for ten thousand dollars. It docks out of Shanghai.” This is real, his mind says on repeat. This is real.

“Why are you telling me this?” She doesn’t sound tired like he does. She’s crackling with viocus energy, none of it directed at him. Snow will die slowly, he predicts.

He shrugs and doesn’t mind the pull that arcs across his ribs. He can’t see her face clearly in the pitch. “Just because we walk in the dark, doesn’t mean we have to walk alone.”

****

It takes them four days to bushwhack to the nearest city with a train that goes to Beijing, and even there it’s a solid day of playing the part of a tourist couple before they can buy tickets to Shanghai.

“Is that beautiful, honey?” Kara says against his ear about something or other, and he nods, taking in the number of security cameras and blacked out car windows. Snow will know by now that they weren’t killed. Last time it took him three months to get to Shanghai and another three to book passage without money, connections, or paperwork. They’re left with the typical conundrum of operative work in the modern era. Big cities mean constant surveillance, but anywhere smaller without a tourist presence, and tall white people will be remembered.

So they float through a museum, keep their faces turned and hidden with tour books, and then take taxis all over the city before finally buying train tickets with stolen money.

“What are you going to do?” He asks her in French as they sit across from one another in a train car.

“Why do you care, John?” She loves French. It’s familiar to speak it with her, and preferable to dozing off. Every time he closes his eyes he still sees Finch, alone and unprotected and the library burning behind him.

“I’m going to New York. You can come if you want.”

“Seriously? That’s where Snow will expect you to go. You’re usually smarter than this, John.”

“There’s someone there I need to find.”

Kara laughs. “That woman? Seriously, John? That’s what this is about? You saw her. She’s married. She doesn’t want you.” Cornered, Kara has always been vicious. He’s missed her. He’s tempted to touch her, just on the shoulder or the hand. An innocent touch. But he knows that was never possible, so he keeps his hands in his pockets. He pictures Jessica’s blonde hair, the curve of her nose, the slight overbite that makes her smile so beautiful. Opposite from Kara in every way.

It hits him, hard, and leaves him a little breathless. Jessica. It’s 2010, and Jessica is alive. He’d come to terms with being here, in that he’d come to terms with the new challenges it presented for getting to Finch, but he hadn’t thought about Jessica, not once. Jessica who is in more immediate danger than Finch. He wants to be sick as he brings the images of her autopsy photos into his mind. Jessica is alive and living with the man who will kill her. Who is killing her. Living with the man who might be, right now, breaking her wrist, throwing her to the ground.

“Oh god,” he says, and the weight of what 2010 _means_ starts to crush him. He can change this.

“Whatever.” Kara says in English. “Wake me up when we get to Shanghai.” She turns towards the window and closes her eyes.

He goes to the restroom and pickpockets a cellphone from a dozing businessman. He dials Jessica’s number by heart and hesitates before hitting “call.”

It doesn’t ring. “We’re sorry,” the recording tells him, and he leans his forehead against the tiny bathroom mirror. “The number you have dialed is not in service. Please hang up and try again.” He tries Finch’s emergency line and gets the same three beeps before the automated voice comes on. It’s not in service because it’s 2010, and Finch won’t set it up until a year from now after a bad scrape that left them out of contact for a harrowing 36 hours. Jessica’s number worries him more. He can’t be too late again.

He goes back to Kara, still faking sleep with her arm pillowed under her head. He forces himself to sit, closes his eyes, and pretends the heat from the bullet graze is Finch sitting pressed against him. He’s still undercover, he still has a job to do. He knows, even before he consciously decides, that he has to go to Jessica first. Finch is tied to him being here in 2010, but he won’t be in trouble for another three years. He wants to see Harold with his own eyes so badly his fingernails leave little half moon impressions in his palms, but he can’t abandon Jessica with that man. Not again.

****

“This the place?” Kara cut her hair into a bob and dyed it a dishwater brown with lemon juice while they were still at sea; utterly forgettable and not nearly as startling as when she wore it dark. It took them longer than he hoped to get passage out of Shanghai on a freighter, and longer yet to hitchhike and take busses across the country from San Francisco. Trains and planes were too risky; too many cameras. He’d been tempted to just make a break for it and get on a plane out of China, but getting caught by Snow in the airport wouldn’t solve any of their problems. Nonetheless, it’s been three weeks now. Too long, even though it’d taken him months the first time around. Too many nights left to stare at the ceiling and think of what-ifs.

The house stands, tall and white and too expensive, with its manicured front lawn. Unlike last time he was here, there’s movement in the house, the shifting of shadows through the sheer white curtains that do nothing to conceal what goes on inside. It’s the picture of suburban innocence.

He nods and watches as a shadow flits in between the seams of the white curtains. They look like the drapes in the hotel in Mexico.

Kara takes the binoculars down from her face and turns towards him in the cramped car. “Snow will have eyes on the house.”

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

She snorts. “I’m glad I didn’t kill you, John.”

They wait until supper time, and Kara produces a large hot-dish container from the back of stolen car and folds a sweater over it. They walk up the sidewalk, arm in arm, and Kara makes a show of keeping their hands intertwined as she rings the doorbell; a gift for whatever surveillance team Snow has on the house.

The door opens. A little girl, brunette and maybe eight years old, stares up at him. “Moooom,” she bellows, and John can’t think straight.

Kara, still threaded through his arm, smiles. “Hi sweetheart. Do you live here?”

A woman, not Jessica, comes to stand behind her daughter. “Can I help you?”

Kara speaks when it’s clear he can’t. “I’m sorry, we were looking for some friends of ours. The Arndts. I thought this was their address. We’re new in town.”

Not Jessica gives a half smile. “Oh. I’m so sorry,” and John can’t breathe. He’s too late again. There are pinpricks in his vision and he can only half listen as Kara salvages the mission.

“That woman, Jessica,” he can hear it in the woman’s voice, the pity. He breathes through his nose, preparing for it. “She moved out. Divorced her husband after he was put in jail and sold the house. That was in... 2006 I think? We bought it from her.”

“Can you give us her new address?”

The woman smiles. “Sorry. I asked her not to tell me. Her husband wasn’t a good man.”

“That’s fine,” John blurts. “That’s... good.”

They leave, arm in arm still, and John spots the utility van across the way that can only be one of Snow’s teams. “I can find her,” Kara says. It’s not an offer so much as a statement.

“Don’t.”

“What? After all this?”

Jess is safe. She has the chance to live a life, whatever life she wants, and to be happy. This is how it was supposed to be. “Don’t,” he repeats. Kara drops it.

They hotwire another car, one close enough to Snow’s team that they’ll have to leave while the police investigate or risk blowing their cover. His fingers itch all the way to the park and ride. He gets out and Kara stays seated.

“No offence, but I’m staying,” Kara says. He knew she would. Snow is here, and if he’s not, she’ll be able to track him from the teams he left behind. She’ll kill him, and he won’t stop her.

“None taken.”

“Don’t look me up.” She slides over into the driver’s seat as the bus pulls up into the lot. “Good luck, John,” she says. She rolls up the car window and winks at him before she drives away.

For so long his life was defined by Jessica’s death. He would have given anything to save her, to re-set his life and be with her again. And now that she’s alive, his life is defined by someone else. He boards the Greyhound bus and thinks three things on repeat. It’s real. It’s different. He needs to find Finch.


	4. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**  

“Nathan.”

“Alicia,” he returns. He quells the urge to tap his fingers against his thigh. Harold should be here. They’d agreed on that, and yet here he is, and here Harold isn’t.

Alicia is two feet in front of him, arms crossed and neck straight. They’re both standing, both playing the power game. Her hair is slicked back into a tight ponytail, which means her boss is in town. But her earrings are dangles, rather than studs, which means she’s off the leash. His hands twitch, sweaty fists in his pockets. Not because of Alicia; he can handle her power plays. Harold is an empty spot in the room, a void to his left he’s gotten accustomed to being filled. He’s supposed to be here, playing the part of Nathan’s assistant and providing them with an extra set of eyes and ears.

He claps his hands together and rubs away the clamminess. It’s dangerous to lose focus around her. “What brings you out of DC and to New York? Other than the weather.”

It’s mid-January and gray out. Harold might be out jogging, maybe he lost track of the time. He goes running a lot, now, says he forgot how free it made him feel in that tone of voice that makes Nathan’s stomach churn. He tried Harold’s cell earlier, but got no answer. “Just wait,” he told Nathan after the New Years ball dropped onto 2006, and they both had probably too much to drink. “Pretty soon everyone will have their phones on them at all times of the day and night. Phones with GPS. You’ll never lose them again.”

“I only lost the one phone. No need to keep rubbing it in.”

Harold shook his head. “I meant people. So much harder to lose people, after that happens.” And then the haze of good scotch on an empty stomach took over, and Nathan can’t recall if he said anything more.  

Alicia has her hands clasped behind her back, a mimicry of calm that is stretched over the tight muscles in her shoulders and jaw.  “Just checking up on you. We have a vested interest in your progress. People higher up the food chain are getting restless, Nathan. We haven’t seen any more proof to back up what you’re doing since the social security number you gave us.”

“Which panned out perfectly.”

Her smile is more of a grimace. “That was months ago.”

“Can I remind you that the United States government has invested a single dollar into this venture? You’re not my boss, Alicia. Don’t try to push me around when it's me carrying all the risk here, not you.”

God, he wishes Harold were here. For all his social dispassion, he’s good at reading situations, and even better at weeding through the lies. Nathan’s a businessman and an entrepreneur; he’s fully capable of handling himself. But he’s left unmoored. Harold has always been half-disappeared from their lives, one foot always pointing at the door, and only ever staying put when there was an interesting puzzle to be solved. Until recently.

Alicia levels him with an unimpressed look. She’s actually very beautiful; sleek and dangerous. He asked her to dinner last year, right after they sold the contract for the Machine and when they were high off the potential of it all. She said, “Remember how I told you certain things were above your pay grade? I’m one of those things.” In the low, cold light of his office, tangibly alone without Harold, he’s tempted to close the three paces that separate them and simply kiss her. It’s over between him and Olivia, anyway. But he has far from nothing to lose, so he keeps his feet planted.

“There are things happening beyond your control. Don’t make this harder on yourself. On either of us.” She hides it well; it would be easy to call it frustration, but he’s watched Harold for too long not to recognise it. She’s scared. The low level, constant fear that manifests as full-bodied tension that can’t be suppressed: the tightness under her eyes, the sharp jut of her chin. She’s scared, and she’s biting.

It’s funny how he realizes, suddenly, that the stiffness in his own shoulders the last five months has been fear. Fear about Harold, his wife leaving him, Will growing up into a young man who hasn’t needed a father for years now. Fear about what they’re building. Fear that nothing he’s doing, has done, will make any difference. And it’s funny how suddenly the stiffness melts away into loose-jointed anger. “Harder on myself?” You’ve been jerking me around for months, and now you waltz in and make demands. You called me at my house, Alicia. You don’t get to make any more threats. This meeting is over.”

She stands very still in the doorway, one hand on the knob. “I never called your house.”

“You did. Months back. You told us about the system reboot and hung up. I’m done playing this game.”

“Nathan, _I never called your house._ And ‘us’? Who else knows about this?”

“Get out, Alicia.”

“Not until--”

“It was just a figure of speech. There is no ‘us.’ Now get out.”

The door clips the wall when she opens it. It’s easier to be angry than afraid.

Nathan gives his secretary the afternoon off, takes the long way home, and forgets to eat. In the loft there’s evidence of Harold everywhere: a rinsed out teacup by the kettle, Harold’s lesser-loved pair of leather shoes by the door and neatly arranged on the mat, and a pile of haphazard papers and computer chips strewn across the round kitchen table. It’s the only thing he’s not immaculately neat about, which always fascinated Nathan, considering Harold’s constant annoyance at Nathan’s own disorganized habits. Harold’s code, his ideas, are incredibly structured and articulate, never a thread extra or out of place. But his process is organic, full of ink stains and soggy tea bags. He still writes with damned felt tip pens, like they used to in college, and a well worn one is laid perpendicular to a stack of papers next to the chair Harold claimed as his. But despite the detritus, Harold is still gone. Only the artifacts, not the man, mark his existence. He tries his cell phone again, but goes straight to voicemail after a strange click.

Harold moved his work into Nathan’s apartment after his (utterly terrifying) collapse, eventually moving himself there, too. It should have made them closer, living and working together. It should have felt like college, with the rush of deadlines, poor choices, and an equal flow of companionship and alcohol. Only it doesn’t ever feel like it used to, not quite. Now Harold is full of sidelong glances, strange phrases, and code that is too-brilliant, even for him. And he doesn’t share all of it anymore, writes it in the only programing language Nathan only half-learned, because he was busy learning the contours of Olivia then. Nathan always been the palm greaser, but he’s a programer by nature even though he’s only half as brilliant as Harold, so he tries to keep up, tries to at least help. But Harold just says, “It’s just new framework protocols, you don’t really want to bore yourself with it. I remember how you fell asleep in college,” and, “Wouldn’t you rather go visit Will? He’s only in town for a few days, and I’d really like to see him too,” so of course they go see Will.

And when Nathan drinks too much one night and says, “I wish Olivia were here,” Harold touches him, very gently like he’s going to disappear not the other way around, and says, “It will all be okay, Nathan, I promise.” He wants to shake him sometimes, at times like that, when he looks and sounds like a completely different person. He misses the old Harold who would get drunk with him, who would spend three hundred grand on a boat because he liked the way the cabin doors opened. The Harold who he spent the last thirty odd years getting to know, getting rich with, getting old with. Harold still drinks with him, still buys up as much real estate as he can get his hands on, but it’s different. Calculated. Like he’s waiting for something rather than living, and Nathan isn’t sure what. He’d trade all of their success for Harold fussing with something in the other room, cursing under his breath in a way that still carried through the house.

There’s a package on the table, set neatly to the side, away from the sprawl of papers covered in blue scribbles. It’s an expensive envelope with ‘Dunstin, Morse, and Brynd’ embossed on the upper edge, and he knows what it is before he works a finger into the seam to open it. There’s no sense dragging it out, he supposes, and spills the divorce papers into the mess, graph paper and bond paper intermixing. Olivia’s handwriting, elegant and without any hint of regret, spells out her signature on the bottom line, blue ink, just like Harold’s. Both disappearing from his life, inch by inch.

 

He wakes up disoriented before realizing it’s only been a few hours. It’s not even midnight yet. Harold is still gone, the pile of papers is still there, and Nathan is still a little drunk. Harold must have come back in the middle of the night, though, because how else could his computer be on and unlocked? A cursor blinks at him, a white on black invitation.

 _< Calculating risk...>_ it types out. Which is odd, because he didn’t click anything. Whatever program Harold was using is still running. One of his automated ones, then, running scenario after scenario. Harold loved making those.

_< Risk acceptable. Threat: 21%.>_

The screen fills with a dozen small dialogue boxes, all scrolling code. He might not be anywhere near Harold’s match in skill, but he’s fully capable of understanding what’s being relayed to him. Harold is tracking someone. Harold is tracking lots of someones. “Jesus.” A dozen women, a handful of men, all with a range of ages and backgrounds. Photos pop up, one by one. Shots from webcams, mugshots, traffic reports, service records. One sticks out. This GPS point has been accessed hundreds of times, sometimes more than once a day. John Rhodes. He’s been everywhere, most recently Kuwait, plus a stint in Iraq. He’s in New York right now, at a bar only a few miles away.

_< Admin. location, probability 89%.>_

And Harold’s there, too. “What the hell are you doing, Harold?”

The code stops scrolling and produces the address of the bar.

Enough of this. Enough of Harold writing code and not sharing it. Enough of his God damned paranoia. Enough of Harold not being here. He gets his coat and is just sober enough to leave his keys and call a cab instead.

The bar isn’t a dive, but it’s not the sort of place he frequents anymore. The coats on the hooks only cost a few hundred dollars at most, and the tables are made of laminated oak, not mahogany. He looks for Harold for a few seconds before feeling overdressed and conspicuous, and making his way to the familiar setting of the bar stool. The bartender doesn’t give him more than a moments glance when he says, “bourbon,” and slides a glass his way.

He takes a slow slip and lets it burn down his throat. There’s a man to his right, slouched over on his forearms and looking at nothing. Even with his head down it’s easy to recognize him as John Rhodes based on the picture on Harold’s computer.

“Evening,” Nathan says, and Rhodes flicks his eyes over to him for a second before he looks back at his hands. “I’m looking for a man. He’s on the shorter side, glasses--”

“Nathan?”

It’s Harold’s voice, coming from behind him; sharp. He twists on the stool and keeps the glass of alcohol in his hand. Next to him, Rhodes drinks and keeps one eye on them. Harold is pale and still in his coat, and Nathan realizes that he enjoys this imbalance of power. Usually it’s Harold who has him stopped and floundering, not the other way around.

“What are you doing here?”

Another sip of bourbon. “Having a drink. “ He raises the now almost-empty glass up and lets the low bar light filter through it. The world isn’t any clearer when he pulls it back to his lips. “What about you?”

Harold hisses and grabs at his sleeve. “We need to go.  No, leave that,” and the amber liquid sloshes as Nathan’s forced to abandon his glass and a twenty dollar bill as Harold drags him into the cold. The door slams shut behind them and they wind up in the alley out back. It’s snowing, just barely.

“You can’t be here,” Harold says, and keeps a hold of Nathan’s wrist, his thumb a hot point against his pulse.

“No? Afraid I’ll run into, what’s his name? John?” Harold goes very still and Nathan is acutely aware of how little space he seems to take up. “Who is he? And the others?”

“Not who I thought he was. At least, not yet.”

“I saw the computer program, Harold. Hendricks, Arndt, Rhodes. All of them. Who are they? Why are you following them?”

Harold tips his head back just a fraction before stopping, frozen between positions. “Oh. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me. I want to tell you, Nathan. But--” He stops when Nathan steps closer.  

He wants to shake him, to take him by the shoulders and press him into the cold brick wall. His hands move and suddenly he is. Harold doesn’t resist, lets Nathan’s hands bunch his coat at the shoulders until they’re both backed up and Nathan can’t see Harold’s eyes because the street lamp is reflecting onto his glasses. He bends so their noses are only inches apart, and the reflection disappears. It’s more intoxicating than the alcohol to finally be able to pin him down and have him in one place. It’s so much easier to see him at this distance. He’s not a catalog of clothing and ink stains, he’s a man with lines under his eyes and too-thin skin that’s yellow in the streetlight.

“I can’t do this anymore, Harold. I can’t.”

“I know.”

“Olivia sent the divorce papers.”

“I know.”

Harold smells of warmth and clean wool, and he drops his head onto his shoulder, presses his forehead into the bone there. He’s so tangible, like this. Harold’s hands reach around him, hesitatingly.

“I can’t do this alone.”

“I’m beginning to realize neither of us can. Come on, Nathan. Let’s go home. We’ll talk there.” And as Harold’s arms don’t quite slip away and they make their way to the curb, Nathan breathes out, slowly and evenly.

  

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” Harold says very quietly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The whisky after the bourbon at the bar might have been a mistake. He’s not _that_ drunk, though. They’re at the table. Harold’s cleared up his code scribblings and made a neat stack of the divorce papers, carefully placed on top of the chaos with the edges tucked square. He keeps trying not to look at them, but they’re so white and stark in the low light, and easier to look at than Harold who is staring at Nathan, umblinking.

“We’re building an A.I.,” Harold says, and he still doesn’t blink, “with virtually unlimited power and potential. It has access to everything. It will be able to think, to plan, to alter itself, to make decisions. They only thing it can’t do is act, and even that, I’ve found, is a smaller hindrance than anticipated."

On second thought, the additional drink was a good idea. “No, we’re limiting for all that. It’s just analyzing government feeds, that’s all. It’s a data cruncher.”

“We’re crippling it.” Harold’s got his hands splayed out on the wood, like he’s trying to anchor himself. “I should have listened to you when I had the chance. You were right about so many things, and I didn’t pay attention until it was too late. I wanted so badly to change things and do them over again. And then there you were, right in front of me...” His voice cracks.

“I’m right here, Harold.” It’s tempting to reach out and touch him, but Harold’s so still. It would be wrong to violate that, somehow. There are dark shadows under his eyes, and he’s thinner.

“I know. I thought about destroying it.”

“What?” His voice sounds hollow. The divorce papers are forgotten about. He can’t look away from Harold now.

“The Machine. Not at first. But after I thought things through, I thought about just... turning it off. Destroying the servers, corrupting my own code, maybe even setting fire to IFT for good measure. After we’d gotten everyone out, of course.”

“Jesus, what the hell--”

“Please, Nathan. Let me finish.”

Nathan’s never been able to say no to Harold, not really. Not when it matters. So he nods, because there is no alternative. This is what he wanted, he reminds himself, and swallows. He leaves the glass of whisky on the table.

“It is the only way to guarantee that it’s not abused,” he says, and he breaks eye contact for the first time. “It wouldn’t be leaving the country defenseless. Just... less well defended,” and it sounds like a rehearsed thing, the way he slows down to enunciate it. “And I suppose I could have. I’m the only person who could have. But the numbers... haunted me the first time, I couldn’t--” He stops and flicks his eyes back to Nathan’s. “I’m not making any sense. I realize that. There’s a lot I should tell you, but not right now. We have a decision to make. You were right, so I’m asking you now. What should we do?” The enormity of it is a rush, more intoxicating than the scotch rolling in his belly. “We’re at a crossroads, Nathan. We haven’t turned it over yet. We haven’t shown them all that it can do.”

It gets clearer slowly, a dawning realization fixed in Harold’s pale eyes. “You want to back out of the contract.”

“The contract is a joke and you know it. This was never about that.”

The anger he felt with Alicia is back, boiling under his skin until he has to stand up and pace. “We have the power to help stop another 9/11. We can’t just run away from that because you’re having some sort of paranoia attack.”

  Harold is calm, frighteningly still. “In a few years the governmental bodies we give the Machine to will abuse their power. Maybe not directly, but they’ll start a cascade. And when they do, they’ll slowly expose the Machine, bit by bit, until it’s defenceless, because we made it that way. Until all that power, all that intelligence, is cracked open. Do you know what happens when anyone with an internet connection and basic hacking skills is able to find government secrets, access codes to missiles, hidden identities?”

“Is that why you’ve been obsessed with the encryption and the defence structures? Harold, you can’t know what might happen in the future.”

“I do. You do, too, I think. It’s human nature. We became so invested in making a machine we forgot about the people.”

“You have to trust _someone_ , Harold.”

“I trust you. I’m suggesting we trust the Machine.”

Nathan stops pacing. “And that means, what, exactly?”

“We take out all the inhibitors. Everything that’s meant to control the machine gets wiped. We stop trying to limit its potential abuse by limiting its capabilities, and make sure it can defend itself from attack and embrace its self sufficiency instead. And then we let it loose, without the government this time. It will do everything we programed it to. Probably more.”

He feels a little sick and slides back down into his chair. “And then what?”

Harold takes a deep, slow  breath. Smiles in that way Nathan remembers, with just the quirk of his mouth. “We lie, Nathan. We lie to everyone. It will be just one more failed venture.”

“My God, Harold. We’re talking about betraying our country.”

“No. We’re talking about saving it.” The stillness is unsettling, mesmerizing. “So I’m asking you. What do you think we should do?”

This project has always been Harold’s. It was Harold’s from the glimmer of the idea, to the conception of the first few lines of code. Even the pitch to the government was Harold’s, just parroted through Nathan’s mouth. He thinks about Alicia, tight and afraid and demanding, of her boss and the other sharks out there. They’ve already tried to get in once, with their clumsy attack after they gave up the Machine’s first number to them. Harold’s right that they won’t stop, and he’s right that the risk that the machine represents is astronomical, and that the consequences of not using it are even more so. He thinks about Will in his first year of medical school because, “I just want to help people. You wouldn’t get it, dad.” He thinks about Harold, who for the first time in years, is asking for his help.

“I’ve always been good at lying.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was an absolute bear in the making, and went through several drafts written from Harold's POV before the several more in Nathan's. I regret, a little, some lost scenes there, but Harold had to go. A thousand hugs and thank yous to Cortue and Dien for not murdering me and helping make this somewhat palatable. @_@ <3


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the deal. Person of Interest broke my heart in Season 3. I'm returning to this fic because of what POI was to me in the past, and because although I'm really good at leaving things unfinished, they don't ever quite leave me alone. That said, I make no promises. I don't know what I will feel for POI going forward. Posting this as a WIP was an experiment that happened to coincide with the series changing, and certain character deaths occurring, and although I am opening this fic back up, my feelings on those changes and deaths remain ... intense. Also intense have been my feelings of guilt for leaving this a WIP.  
> Please consider this non canon compliant (apart from the obvious) starting around season 3.  
> If you have stuck with this, you have my gratitude. <3

The first thing John does after getting off the bus and breathing the exhaust-laden air of New York is buy a suit. It's cheap and cloying and nothing like the suit he wore with Harold. It doesn't make things feel normal, but it makes him feel less wrong.

There are too many variables. His training, bizarrely older than his body now, urges him to lower his shoulders and fall into the steady relaxed walk of a man out for a stroll on his lunch hour. It’s automatic and overrules the crushing impulse to run headlong through the streets and pull the stitches Kara sewed into his side, just one of her many marks on him. He keeps seeing shadows that look like Snow, women with dark hair that look like Kara or Root; he slows his pace and blends in. Too many variables and only the one objective: get to Finch. Get to Finch and make sure he’s alright. Get to Finch and _fix this._

His feet take him to the library, how could they not. He only really comes back to himself when he’s in the shadow of the cold stone exterior. The scaffold is still up around it like a shroud, there’s maybe a few less lines of graffiti, a few more crushed candy wrappers wedged into the cracks in the stones, but it’s unchanged and familiar. The port in the storm he’s been aching for.  

He hasn’t been able to stop the fantasy of Finch sitting in his ergonomic chair, the computers humming at the top of the stairs like nothing’s changed. He’ll look up at Reese, frown at his disheveled state, and say something like, “I’m glad you decided to show up, Mr. Reese,” and John will be able to breathe again. The fantasy that maybe, for once in John’s life, things will be easy and won’t end in blood. He started imagining it the first night with Kara in China, when she curled around him in a farmer’s dilapidated outbuilding and pressed a hot hand to the graze on his side, and he realized how different she smelled from Finch. It was the sort of thing he’d never noticed before. He misses Bear’s comforting weight at his side as he pushes through the graffiti-covered doors; he misses a lot of things.

The library is just as he remembers it, walking under the doorway for the first time with Finch all those years ago, back when Finch was just a rich man and John was just a burned one. It is hollow and hallowed all at once. He takes the stairs two at a time until he’s standing at the top of them. Only this time it’s just a shell of cold walls and molding books and the piss of wild animals. There are no computers at the top of the stairs, no Finch, nothing other than a layer of fine dust. No one's been here in years. John takes slow and deep breaths as he walks back down the stone staircase and leans against the facade outside. It’s just a setback. Just a complication to his mission. He has to keep thinking about it in strict parameters. He steps back out onto the street and straightens his suit jacket.

 

New York has never looked so hard, so impenetrable. The hard lines of asphalt roads and concrete walkways, meeting hard lines of offices and historic buildings, meeting hard lines of people shoving and pressing and rushing. The summer buds and blooms should make it seem softer, but they just cover up edges like a good suit hides the pull of a handgun.

He makes his way to a stand near Central Park. It’s familiar, in a distant sort of way. The way the States looked after he got out of his first tour of duty and civilians looked at him like he was something other, and he looked back at them the same way. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

"How much for the paper?" Gather intel, his training whispers.

The guy at the stand is inattentive, but not in the usual underemployed way. He's FBI, maybe even CIA. It wouldn’t be the first time they operated illegally in New York. Reese used to stand like that, weight on the balls of his feet, stance wide and knees bent, waiting for orders. The empty weight of air against his ear is suddenly an ache. He hasn’t heard Finch’s voice in nearly four weeks.

"Dollar fifty," the agent at the stand says, and keeps his eyes on a building nearby. John hands over two dollars and doesn't wait for the change.

The paper is dated June 17th, 2010. It's not the first time he's seen the date, but it's still unsettling to see. He reads the first two pages, sees a spot about the war in Iraq, another about a hit and run that took the life of a museum curator. He throws it away. He doesn't know if things are the same or not; the first time around on June 17th he was still holed up in a sickbed in China waiting to die from a perforated liver.

“I need to find him,” he says into the plastic shell of a payphone, leans his forehead against the sun-warmed metal, and tries not to be overwhelmed by dejavu. There’s no answer from the payphone, no echo of a mechanical voice. “Please.” He didn’t put any money in, and after a click the voice asks him for a credit card number. He’s alone. He presses his teeth together and feeds in quarters he ripped off from a laundromat.

John runs his finger down the lines of cheap ink in the phone book. He can’t get through to any of the numbers Finch might use. He hadn’t gotten through earlier, when traveling with Kara, but he’d hoped Finch might have activated their emergency number in the last few days, or called the one Reese set up while in China using one of their old standbys. Nothing. Finally, he calls IFT. There’s a man standing behind him in line for the phone, and Reese leans into the metal and wills it to understand. There’s a click, a ring, and then it connects.

“Good afternoon, Ingram Frontier Technologies, how may I direct your call?”

“Yes, is Harold Wren working today?”

There’s a rustle, and then a click. He knows that sound. That’s the sound of a phone tap. There isn’t breathing on the other end, but there doesn’t need to be.

“Yes he is, would you like me to transfer you to him?” She’s too eager: speaking quickly, a hint of nervousness, an edge to the question pushing for an immediate answer. Whatever thrill he felt from pinning Finch’s location down is swallowed up. He wonders how many people are listening in and which organization it is.

“No thank you,” and he hangs up, hard. The metal cord gets kinked and traps his arm. “Damn it,” he says, and tips his head back. The sky looks different. A few years less of pollution, maybe. It's hard to say how much of the city has changed, and how much is him changed instead.

The guy behind him shoves forward a little, and John moves out of the way. There’s a security camera on the lightpole four feet away. He looks at it, sees the familiar blink of red, but there’s no morse code telling him what to do.

 

He circles the IFT Plaza building twice. There are three newspaper stands, two of them are FBI. A hotdog stand two blocks over is probably NSA. So far there’s no sign of Snow, but John’s already on edge. Maybe Kara’s killed him, but maybe she hasn’t. He can’t risk assuming anything, not with Finch at risk too.

His feet stop and he leans casually against the building and feigns checking his phone.

All he has to do is go through the automatic glass doors, up three flights of stairs, and find that dingy little cubicle he first followed Harold to all those years ago. A year from now. Time is blurring, or maybe that’s his mind. He hasn’t slept much these last few weeks. It’s nearly the end of the work day; he wasted most of the summer mid-morning searching through the dusty library in vain, looking for some clue Finch may have planted and coming up empty handed. He’s still frozen in front of the doors. He could walk through, go up to Harold and say, "Sorry I'm late, Finch," and Harold would say, "I think you'll find you're early, Mr. Reese," and have that look on his face, the one he reserves for when Reese comes up the library stairs after a fight and is covered in blood not his own. If he doesn’t move, the FBI agents will notice him.

And then the decision is made for him as Harold walks through the doors, hips loose and gait steady and entirely foreign. He glances at Reese, their eyes lock for a half second, and then he walks past. John is frozen. It’s Jessica in the airport all over again.

“Harold,” he says, and Harold turns, slowly. John can’t tell if the startled look is for show or not. He’s pale, but he’s always been pale. His glasses are round, like they were when he first met the man, and his eyes are the same, flitting between him and the newspaper stand with the man on the hidden walkie-talkie.

“I’m sorry,” he says in the slow tone of voice he uses when he’s hiding something, “do I know you?”

There is a long second where John thinks, ‘oh god, I’m alone,’ and nothing else. He hadn’t allowed himself to even contemplate that option. He was so invested in finding Finch, the possibility that Finch wasn’t his Finch never wormed its way into his mind. They’re standing so close he can smell him. He smells different, like an aftershave he doesn’t ever remember Harold wearing before.

“No,” he says, and his voice doesn’t break. “No, I thought you were someone else.” The words taste like ozone, and the shock he’d felt four weeks earlier starts to seep back in. He’s trained to combat shock, but he never really mastered it. They’re standing close, and when Harold reaches to pat his elbow in a way that he supposes looks something like what a stranger would do to another stranger, he feels something slip into his hand. A piece of folded paper. He presses his fingers tight against it and doesn’t look away from Harold’s unblinking face.

“Good luck finding your friend,” Harold says, and turns to melt into the crowded street. The agent hasn’t moved, the walkie-talkie isn’t being whispered into. John rounds the corner, ducks into a clothing boutique, and reads unfolds the paper carefully. It’s in Harold’s handwriting, blue ink on white paper. It’s just an address, dispassionate and direct, and he lets himself have a moment of disappointment.

 

The address is for a bar, one that’s a little bit familiar; maybe one of the bars he found himself at regularly right before he joined the CIA, back when he was directionless and innocent. Or, closer to innocent. It’s hard to think of himself like that, as anyone other than John Reese, a product of Kara and Harold both.

He plunks himself down at the bar and keeps an eye on the patrons as he takes a sip of beer. He wants something stronger, but he can’t risk it. So far none have the stance of agents, but New York has been so crawling with them, especially around IFT, he’s not convinced. So he drinks his beer, the first one he’s had in awhile, and waits for Finch.  

"It’s you. I suppose this is ironic," the man sitting directly to his left says, and Reese stops with the glass half to his lips.

"Nathan Ingram.” It’s only logical to assume that Finch intended this to happen. The chances of the two of them meeting in the vastness of New York have to be minute, and the inexplicable feeling of betrayal wells up inside him.

Ingram has had at least the one drink, and judging from the cant of his head, probably a few more. He tries to remember when Ingram died. Fall, he thinks, of this year. In a few months, four years ago. A long time, in either direction. He orders a glass of water; his head is spinning a bit even though his own drink is half full still, and greedily sucks down the water instead.

Ingram is a large man, broad but in a way that is not as muscle bound as it probably once was. He’s not physically imposing; John could take him in a fight a hundred times and not lose. But he takes up space. He’s got the charisma of a man not to be messed with, and he oozes it, not like Harold who reigns it in and doles it out in careful measurements. And now, apparently, he’s taken aback by John. He’s much easier to read than Harold.

“I wait for Harold and I get you instead. I guess that figures.” Ingram waves his nearly-empty glass to punctuate the sentence. His eyes are clear, though.

He’s never met Ingram, but Ingram knows him. John runs through the possibilities. Nathan Ingram is drunk, not just tipsy, and is confusing him for someone else. Unlikely. Or, he met Ingram and doesn’t remember it; maybe one of his ops in New York in the early days. But he doesn’t remember losing any time then. Or, a nagging voice in the back of his head whispers, Harold confided in Ingram. As unfathomable as it seems for Harold to confide in anyone, he supposes it would make sense for it to be Ingram. They were partners many years longer than he and Finch have been.

“I guess we have that in common, then,” he says after he covers his pause with another sip of water. “I wasn’t followed, but I wouldn’t take odds that we’re without company. I think our mutual friend would like you to fill me in.” He searches the dimly lit entrance for Harold. There’s no one there and in the end he has to drag his eyes back to Ingram’s, only to find him staring at him, suddenly sober. He’s miscalculated; Ingram doesn’t know. At least not about John.

Ingram's phone dings and he looks down at it; John can't get a clear look. His face shifts. "Who are you, really? NSA? Are you threatening him?” Ingram leans into Reese’s space. “There’s nothing worth threatening over. We told you people the truth; the machine is dead in the water, a failed attempt at the impossible. It was pure hubris. Leave him alone, he’s just a programmer anyway.”

“I’m not NSA. I’m a... concerned third party.” He hands over the note with the bar’s location written in what Ingram is sure to recognise as Harold’s handwriting. It does the trick, and while Ingram doesn’t relax, he does retreat back into his own space and remove his elbows from the bar top.

“Right.” He doesn’t give back the note.

"What did he say?" Reese takes a gamble that it's Harold who sent the text.

"None of your business," he says, and takes a drink.

"Fine. But I'm not leaving without Harold. We'll wait together."

A minute passes. "Harold isn't coming. He said to give you this," he says, and fishes his keys from his pocket. They jingle awkwardly in his half drunk hands and he works to loosen a small brass key from the ring before handing it over. "And he said to trust you. Frankly, I don't. Trust hasn't gotten me many places recently." He writes one of his own with a gold plated fountain pen that seems out of place writing on a cocktail napkin. It’s another address, and John starts feeling like he’s back in the CIA, being told where and when and nothing else, on an endless trail of breadcrumbs.

Ingram hands over the napkin but doesn’t let go right away. “If I’m wrong... If he wrote this under duress, if you hurt him...”

John blinks slowly. “You don’t trust me. Why are you giving me this?” If finding Finch somehow puts him in danger, he’ll let Ingram kill him.

Ingram lets go of the napkin, face blank. "Because we're running out of options."

Reese memorizes the address and then spills his water over it until the ink spreads loose. Fountain pen ink is never entirely waterproof.

A man walks in, FBI probably, the gait is right for it. “Go to the office,” Reese instructs. “Don’t follow me out for at least a half hour.”

 

The address is for a Brooklyn brownstone apartment, not one Reese ever dug up in association with any of Finch's old aliases. It looks just like any other apartment in the neighborhood, plain and unassuming. He stands outside for a minute, looking for men in suits, and when he finds none he still stands on the stoop. The white curtains look like the ones in Jessica's house, and he thinks of her, safe and no where near here and safe, and of the stain on the carpet that will never exist. A black, unmarked Honda Civic drives past the block for the second time. He needs to move.

The key is warm in his hand. He imagines Finch in the house, sitting at a table with laptops around him spread out and stacked like books. Or maybe Finch will be in the kitchen making tea and settling down to read a Russian novel. Or maybe he won't be there at all.

He slips the key into the deadbolt and it snicks into place.

The house is dark, but for a light in the room at the back that looks out over a tiny garden. He makes his way carefully through the rooms one by one, clearing each just in case. The light that's coming from the kitchen is blue, maybe a laptop screen. He pushes the door open careuflly, keeping his gun raised and his eyes flicking about to the corners and the back door before his gaze falls on the figure sitting at the table facing away.

"Harold."

Harold starts and then turns, twisting fully with his neck and spine and looking suddenly like someone not at all Harold. John has memorized everything about Harold, from the lines of his face to the curve of his ears and chin, to the way his hands curve over a keyboard, like they're doing right now.

"John," he says, and his voice cracks. "It's you. It's really you."

John’s legs feel rubbery, shock again, and he starts towards him. Four weeks, several thousand miles, and he’s finally found him.

"Fin--" He's cut off as Finch raises a hand to stop him and roots around the drawers of a cluttered desk in the front hallway to find a slim black piece of plastic with a switch in the middle. A jammer. The apartment is bugged. Finch flicks it on and sets it in the open, and then waves his hand for them to go into the living room.

"John, I--"

It shouldn't feel like this, like they're strangers meeting for the first time, but it does. Their movements are jerky and abortive and despite Finch's apparently uninjured neck, he's stiff and doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands. He settles on wringing them, and John finds himself mimicking the movement. A waste of energy, his training whispers, and transparent.

“I take it my note was clear and you found Nathan?”

Reese raises an eyebrow, and Harold concedes the point with a sigh.

“It was a bit rash of me, I admit. I saw you on the CCTV feed in my office, and didn’t have time to come up with a full plan. You looked... like yourself... and I didn’t want to risk missing you. Or,” he says, leveling that familiar, steady stare at him, “risk you doing something even more rash.”

It's warm in the apartment. He sheds his suit jacket and leaves it draped over the back of a chair. Now they're in equal states of undress at least. Harold materializes next to him and runs a hand down the length of the suit's lapel as it hangs there.

"Hardly the suit I remember you in," he tuts. "Machine sewn, a polyester blend. It’s been a long time, but I know I haven’t forgotten that." There’s that quirk of his mouth that John remembers so well, too.

"It was this or combat dress." Or the awful tourist clothes he and Kara had stolen.

"I'm not sure this is any better to be honest."

They're silent again, but it's not the comfortable silences that would fall in the library punctuated by Bear's snuffles or Harold's typing.

Harold finally breaks it. "I suppose you're wondering--"

"How?" He's spent four weeks wondering.

“I don’t know. Not entirely. The machine... saw an opportunity to rectify what it saw as a catastrophic situation, its own exposure and abuse. It’s not something I programmed, Mr. Reese.” He pauses before regaining composure. “I programmed it to be adaptive. It must have been planning this for years, or at least known it was a possibility. The best I can speculate is it found a way to transfer of our electrical brainwave patterns via landline.” He snorts. “It sounds absolutely mad, but then again...”

John presses his lips together. Ingram won’t be far behind him. He doubts the man waited a half hour, and he doubts more that he went to the IFT office like John instructed.

"Are you alright?" John has found himself by the window and has taken a position just behind the curtain looking out onto the street. "Are you--" safe, he wants to ask, but the answer is so clearly "no," it's not even worth vocalizing.

"Things are... complicated. Please, sit down?" Come away from the window, is unspoken.

"Has it been like this the whole time?" John slides into the wing backed chair that faces the door and the window at an angle. Harold paces before finally following his own advice and coming to rest at the loveseat. "Four weeks of being watched?"

Harold stops mid step, and for an abortive second it looks like his old gait. It’s a dose of familiarity that sends John’s head spinning.

“Four weeks? I'm afraid it was a bit longer than four weeks for me. Interesting that it should be different for both of us. I woke up here nearly three years ago. Quite a bit has happened."

John can’t help himself any more. His training evaporates at the sound of Finch’s sing-song, lost voice; he abandons the chair and the position and goes to Harold, wraps him in an awkward embrace. He smells different, he walks different, but it’s still Harold, and it feels, finally, like coming home in this stranger’s house.

Harold is cold and rigid against him for a moment, and then he melts into John’s arms, solid and real. Things are wrong, different, changed. But Harold is here, not dead in an alley five years from now, and John has found him. The NSA, the CIA, the FBI, everything else, is inconsequential.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is love!


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